Here’s to mini bananas,horehounds andcircus peanuts

Sunday

Oct 7, 2012 at 3:15 AM

My boss was a little embarrassed the other day. He was heading downstairs to our break room for a snack when he stopped by my desk to explain what he was about to eat.He was carrying mini bananas. You may have seen them in the produce section at the grocery store. They are yellow and look just like regular bananas, but are very small — maybe just a little bit longer than a man’s thumb.Rod looked pretty ridiculous carrying those tiny bananas, so I couldn’t wait to hear the story behind them. His wife, Sharon, had purchased the miniature fruit for their grandsons, Ben, 4, and Zach, 2. They are adorable little boys and Sharon and Rod dote on them.When the boys come to stay overnight with “Grammy” and “Grampy,” Sharon always buys them mini bananas.Rod chuckled a little as he told the story and then thought out loud. He wondered if the boys would remember those mini bananas when he and Sharon were long gone. When Zach and Ben are in their 30s or 40s, will they laugh about the mini bananas and say, “Wow, Grammy and Grampy wouldn’t stop with those crazy little bananas. How many of those suckers did we eat when we were children?”I knew exactly what Rod was talking about. I never had mini bananas as a child, but my grandmothers each had “special treats” I would get whenever I visited them. My Nana, Hattie Rowland, would give my siblings and me these horrible hard candies called horehounds, which are made from the extract of the horehound plant. The taste is somewhat bitter and medicinal. In the olden days, horehound candies were thought to ease sore throats and aid in digestion. But they didn’t help us at all.We were all a little freaked out to be visiting Nana and our grandfather, known as “Bamp.” They loved us, but were fussy, no-nonsense folks who did not like a bunch of unruly children running around their home, so we were on edge before we even walked in the door. The horehounds just added to our sense of doom. “Do you want a candy?” Nana would ask shortly after our arrival. “There’s some right over there in the candy dish,” she’d say, motioning toward a glass and brass table on wheels that was filled with her prize African violets and oxalis plants, she claimed were as old as she was.We reluctantly walked over to the candy dish and there they were, the most dreaded confection known to mankind — horehounds. They looked more like animal droppings than candy. The roundish blobs were brown and opaque with a white coating of what must have been powdered sugar on the outside. We did not want to be impolite, so we dutifully popped one of the hated candies into our mouths and held our breath to mask the taste. I was convinced I was either going to vomit or drop dead.“Nana, I have to go to the bathroom,” I’d say, jumping up and down to make it seem like an emergency. My little theatrical performance gave me the chance to scamper away, spit the devil candy into the toilet and flush it. Nana was never the wiser.My other grandmother, Maggie Coskeran, never gave me horehounds. Most of the treats at Grammy’s house were to die for: Southern black chocolate loaf cake with her butter cream frosting; McShera’s donuts every Sunday morning; Russell Stover chocolates; fresh blueberries floating in cream from the Great Elm Farm dairy; and my Aunt Mary Pat’s divinity fudge.But, there was one treat she often had that I did not enjoy. She had a beautiful mahogany table in the living room. It was partially covered with a handmade, lace doily and a mat made of small squares. Each little square was a mirror. Atop the matt sat a leaded cut-glass candy dish. More often than I wish to remember, it was filled with a candy I hated — fake orange circus peanuts that tasted like bad bananas.Grammy loved those circus peanuts and so did my mother. She’d buy them every once in awhile when I was growing up and I would someone end up eating one to see why people liked them. My reaction was always the same — “Phooey!”To tell you the truth, I would much rather eat mini bananas like Ben and Zach. But, who knows? Maybe those mini bananas will become like my horehounds and circus peanuts. It doesn’t mean you don’t love your grandparents. It just means you hate horehounds and circus peanuts.

Mary Pat Rowland is the managing editor of Foster’s and can be reached at mprowland@fosters.com.